Makefile and env vars

I love Makefiles - they allow me to create a local alias for a oft run terminal command.

Recently, I needed to specify an environment variable for one target only and I wanted to avoid passing it through -e parameter. Here is an example:

inmemory: build ## Runs all tests against inmemory db
	dotnet test --no-build

sql: ## Runs all tests against SQL server provided through SqlServerConnectionString env var
	dotnet test --no-build

Since the command being run is the same, the sql target needed additional env var set. Adding export SqlServerConnectionString=... as the first line under the sql target doesn't help - each line is executed separately.

Solution

The solution was extremely simple, here is a full example:

inmemory: build ## Runs all tests against inmemory db
	dotnet test --no-build

sql: export SqlServerConnectionString := Server=.;Database=;User=;Password=;
sql: ## Runs all tests against SQL server provided through SqlServerConnectionString env var
	dotnet test --no-build

Same target can be specified multiple times - either to specify targets to be ran before. Or, in this case, exporting an env var to be used in all lines of the target.